In his November 5, 2025 lecture “Reorienting the Tudors: from Istanbul to Virginia,” Jerry Brotton detailed, with archival correspondence, maps, and paintings, how the Tudor dynasty – from Henry VIII’s accession in 1509 to the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 – transformed England from a peripheral kingdom on the edge of Europe to an imperial and commercial player poised to enter the global stage.
Drawing on his forthcoming exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Brotton assessed a range of visual and material culture to show how primarily commercial activities transformed Tudor England, reached eastward to the ascendant Ottoman Empire and beyond, and effected policies of military settlement and plantation in Ireland and then the Americas.
Brotton, a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London, served as a Class of 1932 Short-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of English in Fall 2025. His visit to Princeton comprised a public lecture and a lunch seminar titled “Going Public: Broadcast, Podcast and Curation in a Digital Civil Sphere.”
